Drones

I thought we should put all the drone related topics into one thread because there have already been several different ones about them being used for drug smuggling, for racing, and of course military applications.

Anyway, during a world cup ski race yesterday a camera drone dropped from 20 meters and almost hit one of the racers, Austrian Marcel Hirscher. Below is a part of the austrian television coverage that captured the incident. You probably don't understand what they are saying but I guess you notice how the commentators are losing it over the event for a moment.

Basically every problem with flying cars - which don't actually go away no matter how many starry-eyed futurists go "But computers will solve everything!" - with the added problem of big rotors spinning lethally fast at about knee level.

There are also problems like the fact that an autopilot for a helicopter is orders of magnitude more complex than the Autopilot on a plane, since it's an inherently unstable craft. And the fact that pilots fly aircraft, but we can do that with a computer nowdays - the primary purpose of a pilot is to be able to handle things when unanticipated situations happen. Yeah, they reckon the passenger can abort the journey and land, or pull up to a hover with a single button press - but, how well does it hover with one engine out? Can it autorotate down safely if there's a computer fault, or an engine dies? Can it detect power lines, or other unanticipated obstructions? What does it do in the event of birdstrike? How do they plan to stop issues with FOD in takeoff and landing zones?

Churba, I agree with everything you said and I'm glad you are saying it, I feel like I just sound like a whiner since flying is how I put bread on the table.

I predict a time where almost any type of helicopter work done now that doesn't involve transporting people will be done by drones. Powerline inspection, drone. Search and rescue, drone, TV news, drone. Bigger, more powerful drones with long loiter times, but with lots of strobe lights and ADS-B which will make them visible to all other aircraft.

I'm not anti-drones, I embrace the future, but I am anti-drone pilots who don't think they need to understand how the US and world airspace is structured,

I predict a time where almost any type of helicopter work done now that doesn't involve transporting people will be done by drones. Powerline inspection, drone. Search and rescue, drone, TV news, drone. Bigger, more powerful drones with long loiter times, but with lots of strobe lights and ADS-B which will make them visible to all other aircraft.

Some of it's already happening, too - I know there's more than one local news station that has either drones, or freelance operators on tap for aerial shots - cheaper than pulling out the news chopper for everything. And a lot of Volunteer rescue groups down here have drones - I know that Bribie Island Volunteer marine rescue has two for S&R operations.

Churba, I agree with everything you said and I'm glad you are saying it, I feel like I just sound like a whiner since flying is how I put bread on the table.

Put it out of your head, man. Expertise is expertise - Aviation is what you do. If you know an idea is impractical because of that expertise, that's not whining, that's providing your hard-won expertise to people who may not be as up on these things.

As cool as quadrocopters are, the automated drones are really what interest me. I'd love to have some sort of security drone I could set up on my roof with a wireless charger that would do sweeps over my property over certain intervals. Or shit, have a mini "wearable" drone with a 360 camera on it connected to some kind of AR headset that could hover behind me and give me a view of all of my immediate surroundings at once. Nobody sneaking up on me. Now of course this would have to be at a point where this technology is more common place so that it isn't just a giant "rob me" sign...